Newsletter

Feds bypass Athens education group for grant, once again

The U.S. Department of Education has once again bypassed Athens’ Whatever It Takes partnership.

Whatever It Takes applied this summer for a $6 million federal Promise Neighborhood grant. The collaborative hoped to use the money to help it reach a goal of seeing every Clarke County public school student on track for postsecondary education by 2020.

The group will continue on with its goals of eliminating intergenerational poverty and improving children’s success, said WIT Executive Director Tim Johnson.

“It means we won’t be able to move as quickly,” Johnson said. “The real issue is to continue coming together to say, ‘This is what we need to do as a community to ensure success for our children.’”

“I think the concept of the work that Whatever It Takes and its partners have undertaken is good. We have to fund it differently and do it differently, but not necessarily forget that work,” said Clarke County School Superintendent Philip Lanoue. The school district is one of the WIT partners.

Even without big grant funding, the community collaborative has already benefitted children in the county by building working partnerships among the school district and other organizations such as the University of Georgia, Athens Technical College, the state Department of Public Health and other agencies, Lanoue said.

“Collaboration has been the primary benefit. Whatever It Takes created a needed forum to really find solutions in a trusting environment,” he said.

The latest rejection marked the second year in a row the big prize eluded WIT.

Of the seven grants awarded, one was reserved for a Native American school district and a second was reserved for a rural district, Johnson said; the other five went to urban school districts in metropolitan areas larger than Athens.

This year’s winners include the Boston Promise Initiative; the Chula Vista (Calif.) Promise Neighborhood; the East Lubbock (Texas) Promise Neighborhood; Five Promises for Two Generations in Washington, D.C.; Indianola, Miss.; the Los Angeles Promise Neighborhood and the Mission Promise Neighborhood of San Francisco.

Last year, grants went to groups in Buffalo, N.Y.; Minneapolis; Hayward, Calif.; San Antonio and Berea College in rural Kentucky.

WIT narrowly missed out on being awarded one of the grants last year, and will probably try again in 2013, Johnson said.

“I expect we’ll apply again, but our focus needs to be on what we can do with our existing resources,” Johnson said. “The focus of Whatever It Takes has never been getting a specific resource. ”